255. CONCERNING THE MORE INTERIOR SPHERE, AND CONCERNING THE CHERUBIM When I was led to the thought of how the more interior and inmost angels inflowed into human minds, and I was considering that they did so in a manner imperceptible, because they are in the sphere of the beginnings of human thoughts, consequently in a like sphere of imagination or representation, which is imperceptible, such a plane of thoughts necessarily being imperceptible - while these things were being turned over in my mind, I was by the mercy of God Messiah given to perceive above the head, a kind of soft volution into which I was afterwards raised, as it were, or which enveloped my thoughts. My first perception, when I was not as yet there, was as though there was the revolving of a soft cloud pressing downwards, and it was said that this can be called the Cherubim, and that from that revolving motion, wheels were attributed to them.* Afterwards that sphere enveloped me. I was then in great tranquillity. The ultimate heaven in which I had been before, was beneath me, and indeed at my feet and under them. I heard someone speaking there, but as though from a very deep place. He was complaining that I had been taken away from them, and that thus he did not want to live. Afterwards when I was thinking about that more interior sphere, in which also I am writing these things (which is still most appropriately called a cherubic sphere), I could know, not only why "wheels" were attributed to the cherubim, but also why they had four faces, the face of a lion", "of a man", "of an eagle" [and "of an ox"] [Ezek. i 10], namely, [of a "lion"] from its strength in the lower sphere, or ultimate heaven, for it holds that in its order, otherwise it would fall to pieces: "the face of a man", because the more interior man, to which this sphere properly answers, is man; the thought which we have is of the interior man only, which thought is thus governed by the more interior sphere. That there was "the face of an eagle" is because that cherubic sphere ascends high above the sphere in which is man's perception, or sensitivity of the understanding. "The face of an ox", is omitted; afterwards the "face of the cherub" is mentioned by Ezekiel in the first place for he then understood that it was the cherub, to which three faces were attributed. [Ezek. x 14.] 1747, Nov. 20, o.s. * Crossed out: "and thus four faces were allotted to them by Ezekiel".